Study Finds Neanderthals Ate Veggies with their Meat

Researchers have found evidence that Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables as part of their diet, contradicting previous speculation that our ancestors subsisted solely on a diet of meat.

A new U.S. study in the upcoming issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found grains of cooked plant material, such as date palms, legumes and grass seeds, in the teeth of Neanderthal skeletons found in Iraq and Belgium.

The BBC says the study "is the latest to suggest that, far from being brutish savages, Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought."

The discovery calls into question the extinction of mammoths at the ice age as the primary cause of the Neanderthal die out.

So, let your kids know, if Neanderthals could eat their veggies, so could they!